We are a culture that expects immediate gratification. Feeling hungry? Visit the drive-thru. Want to watch a movie? Pick one from On-Demand. Need a vacation? Buy plane tickets from your phone. The point is we have grown accustomed to getting access to what we need very easily, shouldn’t the same be said for our critical business systems.  

One of the key benefits to outsourcing your IT to a cloud based managed solution is the ability to get to your data anywhere, anytime as long as you have an Internet connection. Remote access has been a component of traditional networks for years now, but what many people don’t realize is how much labor and expense goes into granting that access. A managed service can help simplify the process.

Quick History of Remote Access

The first technology to provide remote was Virtual Private Networks (VPN), this allowed for a secure connection to retrieve email and files. This was a great option when no other existed, but VPN technology was slow for transmitting data from a PC to the host environment. Additionally, VPN’s required IT assistance for configuring and troubleshooting any connection issues, thus more IT support burden.

Next was the introduction of Terminal Services (or its bigger brother Citrix Presentation Server) as a remote access medium. These technologies allowed for remote connection to an emulated desktop and gave the ability to access email, data, and business applications. This technology is simpler than a VPN to connect and provides the end-user with a rich computing environment in which to operate.  End-users accessed these environments via a desktop client or via a web URL.

Terminal Services (Citrix Presentation Server) reduced much of the IT support requirements by enhancing the way users connected remotely. These platforms also simplified the process of updating applications or rolling out new services by centralizing it to a single server (or server farm.  Make changes in one spot, but accessible to all. 

Internally this creates an additional IT support need by introducing more servers to the infrastructure, application compatibility concerns (these technologies runs on a server Operating System), and licensing headaches. Since much of the remote access can be attributed to off-hours work, IT support is now extended beyond 9-5.

What becomes more available in a managed service?

• Your systems:  By moving to managed services you gain access to redundancies that are not commonly found in most businesses. The provider’s datacenter should have redundant bandwidth, power, cooling, and network services. As a result a user should see little or no downtime, increasing both productivity and availability of mission critical applications and data. Because all access is done via the web, users can have the same user experience in the office, at home, on a cruise, or anywhere where there is an internet connection.
• IT support: The service provider should have stated Service Level Agreements (SLA) with you. This SLA should define the allowable downtime percentages (monthly/annually), change control process, and financial penalties for not hitting these objectives. When a problem arises the provider should have a team of IT professionals available to you and provide a resource with skills equal to the problem at hand.  Support should not be more than a phone call away.
• Business strategy: This also makes your existing IT staff (provided you have not outsourced all of your IT services) available to focus on the strategic initiatives of your company instead of firefighting. This increases their opportunity to support the business goals of a company through expanded technoloogy. This can include working with the Executive team in developing a technology roadmap, investigating technologies to meet business issues, and identify key areas of improvement.

So the first reason for outsourcing in my mind is to increase access to your IT services.  Next up will be reason #2- Upgrades.

It is exiting almost as quietly as it came on the scene, but as of June 30, 2010 Microsoft will end future development of the Windows Essential Business Server (EBS). Microsoft Essential Business Server was designed to bring many of the vital business services in a complete package to customers outgrowing its flagship Small Business Server (SBS) product which maxed out at 75 users. EBS leveraged virtualization technologies to deliver a multi-server solution including Server 2008 Standard, System Center Essentials, Exchange 2007, Forefront Security for Exchange Server, and SQL (Premium Edition Only). These services were bundled with single client access license (CAL) for all services and were geared to mid-sized businesses (76-300 desktops).

Companies investigating EBS often found they did not have the need or ability to support and implement all of the advanced services that EBS provided. Additionally, it was often more economical for those only moderately surpassing the Small Business Server quota to by each service under individual licensing plans. Another reason this product never gained enormous popularity is many companies are outsourcing many of the included services in EBS (email, monitoring, and management quickly come to mind).

Microsoft, when pressed for “why” the product is being discontinued, issued the following comment via their EBS Team blog, “businesses are rapidly turning to technologies such as management, virtualization and cloud computing…” This announcement was made soon after Microsoft’s CEO Steve Ballmer stated that Microsoft is making a corporate shift to the cloud. At a recent appearance at the University of Washington Ballmer said of cloud computing “… I will tell you, we’re betting our company on [cloud computing], and I think pretty much everybody in the technology industry is betting their companies on [the same].” Ballmer also added that 70% of Microsoft employees are working on cloud initiatives today and a year from now it will be 90% of the workforce.

That statement was echoed at a recent Northeast Partner Summit that I attended. The Microsoft team were heavily touting the advantages of moving to the cloud and were presenting some of Microsoft’s cloud strategy. Partners at the summit are finding more and more of their clients looking at services that can be better leveraged via the cloud, and what services, as technology partners, they can provide in concert with Microsoft.

Partners were also asked about what services were being migrated to the cloud by their clients and the most common answers were remote backup of data, email, and collaboration services. These services were core to the EBS product further demonstrating why that product will soon be gone. It was also of the group’s opinion that the market for EBS was too narrow due to its limited reach (user communities of 76-300) in the marketplace.

For those who might be reading this and have EBS implemented you can get information on what that means to you here. For the rest of us we need to develop or rethink our IT strategies as Microsoft begins to change their business focus from on-premises to cloud delivered services.

I would love to here your thoughts email me at bdoyle@fandotech.com.

Brian Doyle

I am a Smartphone addict.

It’s true; I have had this addiction for quite some time now. You may even remember me sharing my love for my PDA in our August ’09 newsletter “A little public display of affection for my PDA” where I took my habit to the beach (much to the chagrin of my family). Work is never more than an arm’s length away!

I have had a number of devices over the years. From a Blackberry to a Microsoft based PDA; I’ve loved so much of what they had to offer.

But now I’ve got the Droid! (The heavens open. Queue the angelic chorus!)

This device does all that my previous gadgets did and then some. My Droid has increased productivity and replaced other electronic devices, allowing me to streamline my entire life; work and the fam! Let me share some highlights:

Replaced GPS: I’m more on time for my appointments! Just speak the address into the mic, touch “get directions”, touch “navigate”, done! You are now on your way to your location with both visual and voice commands leading the way. This service costs nothing additional to your carrier data plan and it freed up the TomTom for my wife. Win, win!

Citrix Access: I am out of state, on my way to a football game, and I realize I never approved time sheets. No worries via Citrix from my Droid, I am able to approve them without a PC from the Droid. This allows me to access any app from anywhere…securely! (Fandotech can hook you up with this! Email me for details…)

Marketing: We have a huge Social Media initiative we are working on at Fandotech. I am able to access and communicate via Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook via my phone. I can get that info real-time anywhere I go.

Evernote: A great free app that’s furnishing me with the functionality to create voice notes and text notes, and to upload files and photos for any topic. My laptop came preloaded with the companion software so now I sync between devices. I love the voice notes!

Contracts: Using the camera and the Scan2pdf app, I can take a contract as I leave the client site and create an electronic document without a scanner or PC on hand. Then I email it to the office for electronic filing before I even leave the client parking lot.

Of course, there are plenty of fun apps that could be “Productivity Quashers” in a business setting but certainly make my downtime more enjoyable!

Replaced separate MP3 player: This was another device I was able to lose. With 16GB of memory coming standard with the Droid I have more than enough space for my music, audio books, and podcasts.

Pandora Radio: This ad-supported application allows me to be my own program director. Create a station for a band you like and Pandora will play music from that band and musicians from the same genre. You can approve or deny the music provided to help refine the station to meet your tastes….it’s free, BTW!

Fantasy Football: I am a Fantasy Football junkie and there’s an app for that. Changing lineups while out with the family on a Sunday…huge! Rumor has it next year the NFL Redzone will be accessible on the device!

Where: This free application will identify your location, tell you the weather, gas prices, reviews and news for that location, and if you want to take it a step further, the pulse will tell you what Twitter buzz is going on in that town. This app is terrific when you are on the road and have to answer the question “Where should we eat?”

The Best Part! Everything listed above is free! Let me rephrase that, you have to pay for the Droid and, of course, your cell service, but each of the applications either comes standard with the device or was a free download at the Droid marketplace. In fact, the only application I paid for was Touchdown by Nitrodesk which gives me a full Outlook style client on the Droid. (That was my own need.) The Droid will connect with Exchange using its own utilities natively, but across separate apps for email, contacts, and calendar functions. I wanted something simpler to use. It cost me $20.

So my addiction once isolated to work endeavors has now extended into my private life. My Droid is never more than an arms length away (except for meetings at the office, it has been banned!). The reality is this has given me untethered access to all of the resources I need to be more productive and available in my job while also being more present for the important family events.

I can’t wait to see what the technology pushers come up with next.

Brian Doyle

As we head into the end of the year our attention turns to family and the holidays, but as anyone who has ever owned a business will tell you, it’s also time for tax planning. Yes, at a time when most of the world is winding down, the entrepreneur in the room is thinking about how to minimize his taxable earnings. Doesn’t that just ooze ‘Happy Holidays’! It actually can! But first you need to take advantage of the Section 179 depreciation deduction and buy yourself a gift!

Early in my career, working in telecommunications, the last couple of weeks of the year were fantastic! It was so quiet. Clients and prospects pushed off meetings and proposal discussions, giving way to long lunches and daytime Christmas shopping. By the 15^th, everyone was saying “see you next year” as we wound down, reorganized, and prepped for the New Year. 

Moving to technology, boy was I surprised, the busiest time of the year is December! There seemed to be a big push for hardware and software quotes with strict deadlines for delivery before year’s end. I was truly surprised by the flurry of sales activity. I couldn’t understand the urgency. What was driving them to buy? 

Fast forward to when I started my own IT firm. As year-end rolled around our accountant advised, “It’s time to buy the company some gifts.” I thought he was crazy. We were trying to build the business, why was I going to spend money. He explained that by reducing profits with legitimate expenses you can reduce your corporate taxable burden. So, programs like Section 179, make year-end a great time to buy.

Ah ha, now I understood why my clients bought so much in December.

Technology is a great option when you need to reduce profits. The items have a large enough price tag to make a difference on your Profit and Loss statement and Uncle Sam allows companies to claim it as an expense rather than capitalizing and depreciating these assets. I am not a tax lawyer, but it’s my understanding that this year the Section 179 benefit is up to $250,000 (but it cannot surpass a company’s total taxable income). If you had a great year this could allow for some significant upgrades.

So if you’ve been putting off some IT upgrades, now might be the time to buy. Get yourself something nice, you deserve it. In the meantime, I will be waiting to hear from you.

Brian Doyle

HootSuite offers a professional and consolidated collection of Twitter-related tools. It is a website that you log into from your web browser from anywhere, not a program that you have to download and install.

You can set up HootSuite to manage one or several different Twitter accounts. From its slick interface, you can easily create and customize multiple tabs of tweets, and each tab can have one or more columns inside that further organize tweets. Each column represents some grouping of tweets, such as your home feed, mentions of your company or Twitter account, direct messages to you, pending tweets (that you haven’t sent yet), sent tweets, and various keyword searches for things you’d like to monitor. You can easily control column width, as well as drag and drop columns and tabs to change their order and position.

As mentioned, each column features a list of tweets matching the criteria you selected. Each tweet is accompanied by the photo/avatar of the tweeps (Twitter users like you and me), the time, date, and source of the tweet, and a group of buttons that easily let you Favorite/Unfavorite, Direct Message, Reply, or Re-Tweet. You may also click on the tweep’s name to view their Twitter profile.

Above the conglomeration of tabs and columns is a collapsible box from which you can tweet directly (from any of the Twitter accounts you set up in HootSuite). You can type your tweet, select one or more Twitter accounts to issue the Tweet, choose what day and time you’d like the tweet to go out, and even use its URL shortener (like the formerly mentioned bit.ly – http://bit.ly) to shorten long web addresses. So, HootSuite can be used to queue up multiple tweets in advance—for several different Twitter accounts.

For the more intensively-inclined Twitter user, HootSuite offers the ability for multiple users to log into your HootSuite account and manage it with various restrictions that you control. Further, it graphically tracks statistics about your Twitter usage, lets you monitor your company brand, and embed your custom HootSuite columns in other websites.

HootSuite is an excellent Twitter tool that we’ve been using for a couple weeks now with great success. I keep it open in my browser all day, and check it from time to time to keep tabs on my Twitter life. Take a look at it and let us know what you think!

Craig Samson